Pick Your Own is the best thing ever!

What a lovely Sunday! Probably one of the more eventful Sunday in a while. Instead of sitting indoors all day my other half actually wanted to go out with me. And that's never a bad thing, gives me the chance to dress up and make myself look all pretty!

We keep driving past this pub really close to our house and every time it's sunny, it's absolutely packed. People just seem so happy sitting there in the sun, having a drink and a bite to eat with friends or family. As it's been so sunny, we thought that we wanted to be a part of that. I was very pleasantly surprised actually! Apart from the very whacky wallpaper (even the ceiling was covered in it..) it was a very nice place. I wasn't going to order anything big, but then I saw the organic beef burger on the board and couldn't help myself. I was so glad I went for it instead of a salad, it was one of the best burgers I've ever had. Very nicely cooked and the portion was just big enough to fill me up (without making me feel like I wanted to roll out of the door!).

I ordered pudding simply out of pure curiosity. They make Sambuca flavoured sorbet!! I've always loved liqourice and Sambuca is probably one of my top spirits, for me liqourice is a piece of my childhood.

I am so going back to this pub. Highly recommend The Walnut Tree if you ever happen to pass by.

After lunch we popped into this Pick Your Own garden at a nursery close to where we live. They have so many things you can go and pick is amazing - strawberries, gooseberries, rhubarb, peas, a few different types of beans, apples, blackberries... Unfortunately only the strawberries and gooseberries were in season today, need to go back in a few weeks to get some more stuff! Especially looking forward to getting some peas and blackberries, yum. My choice of clothing was completely wrong for today, though! It was so incredibly windy so I had to hold onto my dress to keep it down. Not a fan of the thought of flashing everyone near me!

Half of the strawberries are just gonna be eaten like that with a bit of sugar, rest will be used to make a pie or a cake. :) Haven't quite figured out what to make with the gooseberries, but I'll most likely end up making jam. Just need to get some jars to store them in.

WI 26: -1.2kg

Last week's water weight and a bit of extra gone. :) Only 1.9kg to hit the -10kg benchmark, I wonder if I can do it in two weeks. Would also be nice statistics wise, it'd mean that I'm losing 2kg a month instead of the 1-1.5kg I've been losing so far every month. I'm hoping to speed things up a bit now so need to push myself that little bit extra.

Chicken legs

I have the typical Scandinavian skin. This means I'm naturally quite pale and don't really tan that easily. Instead of tanning I usually just burn horribly and eventually that turns into a tan. :D Repeating this process for years and years, it has actually made my shoulders, face and arms tan quite easily. This isn't exactly the case with my legs though. They just don't tan. Never have. I've actually wondered if I should make them burn on purpose so they'd get some colour eventually.. I know this is an incredibly stupid idea as it can lead to skin cancer, but I'm getting pretty desperate about it! Maybe I need to get those "tanning" moisturisers and drown my little chicken legs in them and hope for results.

 

It was a wonderfully sunny day today so I wanted to go and just sit at the beach and hope that the sun would like to send some of it's UV rays in my general direction. I only sat there for about fourty minutes before it started getting windy and very cloudy. It's not quite that pleasant when you're wearing a short skirt and a small top.

I've also noticed that whenever I go for a walk and aren't wearing proper exercise clothes, I feel like it's not a walk at all. I walk slower and my heart rate doesn't go up in the slightest so it just feels like a casual stroll. To me walking has a completely different meaning nowadays, to me it means "let's go and get my heart rate up to make fat cry".

Our precious puppies were enjoying the sun today as well.

Food! I've done incredibly well food wise this week and I'm very proud of it. I have however had a few ice lollies just because it's been so warm. I've had these wonderful frozen smoothies, one in raspberry and one in mango. Can't quite decide which one was my favourite, both so delicious! They shall remain an occasional treat though, I had a look at the amount of sugar in them and wanted to cry. :D And strawberries with a splash of single cream for pudding last night.

Double lunch & dinner post as I didn't make a post yesterday. Yesterday's lunch was salmon with couscous, peas and sweetcorn. I always add a few tablespoons of low fat sour cream and sweet chilli sauce into it to make it all stick together nicely (makes it easier to eat). Dinner was fajitas with the Old el Paso BBQ spice mix, salsa, low fat sour cream and ketchup. Yummy.

 

And today for lunch a simple fishfinger sandwich on wholewheat bread with lettuce, cucumber and ketchup. Dinner consisted of brown rice, sweet chilli & pork sausages and a ton of salad (lettuce, cucumber, yellow and red peppers and croutons).

Overall feeling quite positive about tomorrow's weigh in. I've had a few sneaky looks over the week and all the water weight is definitely gone by now. I seem to be drinking more water than I usually would as it's been rather warm this week, so shouldn't have any issues tomorrow morning!

Catching up

I've had a bit of a writer's block the past few days. I've just simply felt like there's really nothing to write about as I do the same things every single day. I am however writing a bigger post about something that is a very big part of my life (and everyone else's who's losing weight) - stay tuned.

I've been talking about signing up at Fitness First with my other half for a while now. I just really want to go and speak to a personal trainer who'd have the proper knowledge about exercising, I really want to get a personalised workout plan that would support my spine AND get me toned. I have a rough idea but it's just better to get a professional to help you sometimes. Shouldn't be long and we will sign up, as I am burning to go and I'm really getting my other half into the idea as well. He used to go to the gym a lot when he was younger, but nowadays his work keeps him quite fit so he hasn't really had the need to go.

And seriously oh my god what is happening to my calves?! They just keep getting bigger and bigger. And then just to make them look even bigger, I've lost every single bit of fat from the rest of the leg. My ankles are ridiculously tiny. I'm going to start feeling all lopsided soon. All I'm really doing at the moment is walking as I'm trying to avoid high impact workouts, you just wouldn't think that it'd have such a huge impact on your muscles.

I just to rant a bit as well. I read this Finnish forum that seems to be full of 12-16 year old girls. I constantly see threads pop up about fitness / losing weight / eating healthy, and I just want to cry every time I open one. I mean I'm not an expert but I've got a fair amount of knowledge about healthy living so I can quite happily say I know what I'm talking about. Anyways. It really worries me how little all these girls know about losing weight healthily. They overload themselves with five different types of exercise per day, eat way below 1000 calories a day, eat junk instead of proper food or just in general have so little clue. The internet is full of useful and accurate information about all this. Sure, you get some clashing information but I think that's just a part of the fun - read everything you come across, think about it, question it, read different fitness forums, talk to people... Your options are limitless. Just don't be silly and starve yourselves.

Supermoon

I admit to being a bit of a geek when it comes to space stuff. I follow I fucking love science on Facebook, I read up on random sciency / spacey stuff every now and then and keep up with meteor showers, comets and so on. I've been very excited about the supermoon and it's in "full force" tonight! My other half was so generous to drive me to a hill to see it without all the light pollution. Getting up on the hill was definitely it's own challenge, think we walked for a good 5-10 minutes before getting all the way up. And I'm very sorry the picture quality is absolutely horrible, can't do wonders with my phone unfortunately.

Other than my late night hike, I decided to have a kind of a rest day today. I didn't just slack about, though. Cleared some wardrobes, scrubbed our bathroom, general tidying up and sorted out our linen cupboard. I love it how cleaning burns calories, I can happily say that was my exercise for today haha! It did kill my back, though. :/ It's been very sensetive the past few days, even the smallest amount of stress on it provokes the pain. I can't remember being quite this sore for a very long time, starting to get a little worried about it now.

Food wise today's been a bit funny. I had leftover curry (from Friday) for lunch - that's really not pretty when it's in one of the plastic containers all mushed up so didn't take a picture - and baked potatoes with fish fingers and a salad for dinner. Why funny? High sodium again, with the curry and the batter on the fish. Time to fix things again.

WI 25: +0.9kg

Water weight. :p Did the classic "oh I can't be bothered to cook" on Friday so we went for a curry. One sag roll, a poppadom, nababi chicken, rice and a naan bread. Eh. A bit overboard there but you know, not the end of the world. :)

Jamaican food ♥

Since coming back from their holiday, my in laws have really fallen in love with the Jamaican culture. This obviously includes the food side of it as well! I didn't really have a proper lunch today (literally just wholewheat pasta with beetroot) so I was starving by dinner time. I did sort of snack on stuff while waiting for things to cook but not gonna worry about that too much.

Anyways! Jerk chicken, rice and a salad made out of kale, tomatoes, peppers and onion. I also had a little bit of this fish curry I didn't take a picture of. Incredibly delicious, just spicy enough to give the food a bit of a kick but not too much to only be able to taste the spices. And a bit of pudding as well in the form of apple pie, strawberries and a little dollop of vanilla ice cream. :) Tomorrow's weigh in might not go quite as well as I want it to, haha!

And just to float in the clouds a bit, I got this wonderful message from my friend today. It made me smile so much and I really wanted to share it with you guys.

"I respect you so much. You do so many things even though your back is as it is... You could be just miserable and just stay in bed all day feeling sorry for yourself, but you do so many things, clean, housework, walking the dogs, fitness etc... [...] But most of my respect for you is earned because you're willing to change your life. Losing weight takes alot out of you and is difficult. You're so strong for continuing it."

Thank you. <3

5k special

As a small thank you for getting the blog to five thousand views, I did something a bit special for you guys. :) Feedback welcome! Godawful thumbnail options but can't do much about that.

Back to studying!

"Thank you for attending your interview. I am very pleased to confirm our offer to you for a place on the above course due to commence September 2013 at Chichester."

Yay!! I am SO happy! I was quite nervous about this actually, I just kept thinking that the tutor will reject me because of my back. I know he technically can't do it as it'd be discrimination against me but yeah, I kept thinking that what if he just says that there's no point in me starting this course this year if my back isn't fixed yet? Now all I need is to see the surgeon at the end of July to confirm my operation (hopefully I can influence it..) and I know for sure if I can get on this course. Exciting times!

Getting that letter today definitely cheered me up so much. It was so miserable for most of the day really, just really gray, foggy and dull. And on top of that it was raining slightly. I didn't want it to affect my exercise plans and went for a nice long walk anyways. I really should start finding new walking routes, I seem to go to the beach pretty much every other day lately. Despite it being really foggy it was still quite pretty, quite a mysterious atmosphere. Tide was down, it was quite warm and you could just feel the moisture in the air.

 

I've been struggling with my back since the op. The pain seems to be provoked a lot easier than it did before, and the type of pain has changed as well. I've gone from burning pain to a sting, the pain feels a lot more local now. I'm trying to do the same amount of housework every day but it's just getting more and more difficult. Ungh. Maybe I should try and reschedule my appointment with the surgeon.

Anyways! Mandatory food post time! My other half likes to be silly every day when I take pictures of my food and sticks his thumb in the way. Earlier he said "Oh if you don't put this picture up on your blog I'll comment!", guessing the comment wouldn't be too pleasant.. :D So here you go, lunch (wholewheat pasta with ground beef and a value veg mix from Tesco) and dinner (pork & sweet chilli sausages with a small dollop of mash + roasted carrots and peppers) with a goofy picture.

 

How losing weight changes a person

More about the title in a bit. Just getting the daily food post out of the way first. :) As it's been quite obvious lately in my posts, I'm trying to reduce my carbs and then two weeks before going to Finland I'm going low carb. At the moment I'm trying to have one low carb and one high carb meal. I tried going cold turkey with it a year ago and it just failed miserably, I was just craving carbs 24/7. Maybe being smart about it this time makes it a bit easier..

And now, to the actual thing I wanted to talk about. It basically boils down to feeling way more confident than I used to before starting my weight loss journey. It's very noticable in clothing alone. I used to wear dark clothes, I barely had any colour in my wardrobe. I never actually paid that much attention to it until recently when I actually opened my drawers and saw the increase in colour. I just automatically go for the bright coloured clothing now when I'm shopping, I can't even remember the last black / dark top I've bought. It's not a concious decision really, I just seem to prefer all the cute colours nowadays.

Old and new.

Oh and I can't wait to be able to buy all those skin hugging dresses, pretty skirts and tops. I just seem to be having this eternity project with my thighs at the moment! It is so very painful to be out on a hot day when wearing a skirt and your thighs rub against each other.. On the joys of sweat rash. I made that mistake last week actually, had to walk so much that day and it really backfired. :( Still got the marks on my thighs from that! Oh well, I've got these shaper shorts (pretty similar to these) I bought last year when we went to Rome purely for that purpose, I'll just be rocking those hotties again this summer. :D

Doggy day

Somewhat slacky day again. Had my dear friend over most of the day so my exercise for this day includes a walk with the dogs. I will probably go for a "proper" walk after dinner has settled to make up for it.

Didn't actually take a picture of lunch (or my afternoon snack for that matter)! Pancakes with bananas and maple syrup for lunch + wholewheat toast with the same toppings later on in the afternoon. I was just so hungry, lunch didn't fill me up the way it usually should.

Anyways. Our boys really loved running around in the park today. The puppy we have is too small to go for long walks so unfortunately had to lock her up in the kitchen before we left. The cries were heartbreaking! Need to do it though, don't want her to develop arthritis or any muscle issues. It was a bit miserable though, raining slightly and the sun was nowhere to be seen. :( Luckily the sun is out now so my evening walk should be nice and pleasant. ;)

I did something a bit out of the ordinary for dinner! I mean I'm a rather skilled cook and I'm not scared to try "different" things, but I usually just cook the familiar things. I decided to go with chicken stir fry tonight. Fried peppers, carrots, onion and garlic in sesame oil for a few minutes, added chicken, seasoned with various spices (a bit of cayenne pepper, Chinese 5 spice, paprika, salt, pepper) and boiled noodles. After it was all in the wok I poured a bit of soy sauce and sweet chilli sauce on top to give it that extra kick. Should've cooked more, it was delicious!